Saturday, June 30, 2012

Apsen Ideas Festival--Using Language to Kick Start a Jobs Movement

This week I'm excited to share with you what I
learn at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Wherever I go, I welcome opportunities
to see how world language and culture is integrated in the very fabric of our
society.

In my first session at the festival I had the good fortune
of catching Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post’s “Starting a Movement to
Kick Start Jobs”.

Arianna shared recent research by LinkedIn that
there are 3.7 million jobs here in America that are going unfilled because we
don’t have enough people with the right skills to fill the positions. 3.7
Million Jobs?

In New York state we have an 8.5% unemployment
rate. Could you image what it would mean to the state, local communities and
families to put even a small percentage of these people back to work?

Hearing the statistic about the unfilled jobs made
me think about language and wonder how many of these jobs that are unfilled are
related to language or lack thereof.

A
report by the Defense Language and National Security Education Office said that
there is a critical deficit of multilingual employees within government that
impacts national security and foreign relations; this sector has 3.1 million
employees but less than 8% of them have the ability to speak a second
language.

Locally, there are jobs in healthcare that require
multilingual skills to serve a growing diverse population…not to mention,
travel and tourism and trade. These are all 21st century jobs
that will need to be eventually filled by students…our future workforce if our
country is to be successful.

Back to Arianna Huffington, who was born in Greece
and has had considerable success with Huffington Post. Her command of English
allowed this. Would the Huffington Post have the same impact if it were
only in Greek? Media’s ability to transact across borders is priceless in
today’s global society.